Developing Your Personal Brand Map, Part 4: Influence

On the Road with a Productivity Map 

Your productivity map includes your mission, vision, and values. When it was time for our family to move to another duty station, we always drove. To make the trip the most productive it could possibly be, I made it my mission to determine and study the route because my purpose was to get us there. It was simple. 

I didn’t just want to get there, however. I had a vision for how we were going to travel. If I close my eyes, I can almost taste the Kentucky Fried Chicken and Krispy Creme Donuts that I was going to have my parents purchase before we left. I can feel the bend of my pillow pressed just-so in the corner of our Lincoln Continental right under the light so I could read my poetry books at night. The sight of my Barbie dolls dressed to the nines (and the stuffed animals I insisted on getting every time we stopped at a Stuckey’s) all lined up in the back window gave me a particular level of satisfaction. The sound of my mother’s Aretha Franklin 8-track tapes playing as we sped down the highway made the whole thing feel like a party.

I have always valued rhythm, revelation, and relationship, and that was reflected in how I prepared for where we were headed. (As we made our way through the South in the ‘60s, I was even particular about where I went to the bathroom. I made that very clear to my father.)

Identity and Your Brand Journey

As I reminisce, I realize that my identity was the foundation for it all. Who I was determined how I planned. The way I prepared was a direct reflection of my personality traits. That’s why you have to create your identity map to plot out the dimensions of who you are. That will help you recognize the milestones as you reach them. 

But your influence map, that’s the third map that I think you need to have. And when we are talking about your personal brand and again, we’re going to start with your thinking.